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| TWILIGHT is here, soft breezes bow the grass, | |
| Day’s sounds of various toil break slowly off, | |
| The yoke-freed oxen low, the patient ass | |
| Dips his dry nostril in the cool, deep trough. | |
| Up from the prairie the tanned herdsmen pass | 5 |
| With frothy pails, guiding with voices rough | |
| Their udder-lightened kine. Fresh smells of earth, | |
| The rich, black furrows of the glebe send forth. | |
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| After the Southern day of heavy toil, | |
| How good to lie, with limbs relaxed, brows bare | 10 |
| To evening’s fan, and watch the smoke-wreaths coil | |
| Up from one’s pipe-stem through the rayless air. | |
| So deem these unused tillers of the soil, | |
| Who stretched beneath the shadowing oak-tree, stare | |
| Peacefully on the star-unfolding skies, | 15 |
| And name their life unbroken paradise. | |
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| The hounded stag that has escaped the pack, | |
| And pants at ease within a thick-leaved dell; | |
| The unimprisoned bird that finds the track | |
| Through sun-bathed space, to where his fellows dwell; | 20 |
| The martyr, granted respite from the rack, | |
| The death-doomed victim pardoned from his cell,— | |
| Such only know the joy these exiles gain,— | |
| Life’s sharpest rapture is surcease of pain. | |
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| Strange faces theirs, where through the Orient sun | 25 |
| Gleams from the eyes and glows athwart the skin. | |
| Grave lines of studious thought and purpose run | |
| From curl-crowned forehead to dark-bearded chin. | |
| And over all the seal is stamped thereon | |
| Of anguish branded by a world of sin, | 30 |
| In fire and blood through ages on their name, | |
| Their seal of glory and the Gentiles’ shame. | |
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| Freedom to love the law that Moses brought, | |
| To sing the songs of David, and to think | |
| The thoughts Gabirol to Spinoza taught, | 35 |
| Freedom to dig the common earth, to drink | |
| The universal air—for this they sought | |
| Refuge o’er wave and continent, to link | |
| Egypt with Texas in their mystic chain, | |
| And truth’s perpetual lamp forbid to wane. | 40 |
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| Hark! through the quiet evening air, their song | |
| Floats forth with wild sweet rhythm and glad refrain. | |
| They sing the conquest of the spirit strong, | |
| The soul that wrests the victory from pain; | |
| The noble joys of manhood that belong | 45 |
| To comrades and to brothers. In their strain | |
| Rustle of palms and Eastern streams one hears, | |
| And the broad prairie melts in mist of tears. | |
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